As a Linux user - I take the comparison to Apple (poorly) as an insult! Really though - beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder.
With that said...
Windows - fixed look - you can change the background - you can change the color of the decorations - otherwise you are stuck with the way it looks.
OS-X - You get what Apple thinks is pretty.
Linux - A chameleon with 5 to 7 possible different window managers to choose from, thus every aspect of the environment is customizable. You can even have a raw terminal if that is ALL you want.
OS-X has a following. They also only have 3-4% of the market. Same is true for Linux. The majority of people who by Apple will buy nothing else. At least I can say that I have multiple Windows boxes along with multiple Linux boxes. (Not to mention my Droid phone ;-)
Not to worry. I’m going to giving linux another shot. Ubuntu I guess. Do you have a linux better than Ubuntu for learning the basics such as downloading and installing a new program....Never could figure that out in my Linux experiments.
But last time I tried Ubuntu looked good as soon as I got rid of that sludge brown default color